2014 what are you reading thread

weird? America was built by psychopaths with bottomless greed, my friend

http://www.raggedclaws.com/home/2011/02/05/look-here-read-just-passing-by-by-alex-nino/
Probably one of the best things Alex Nino ever did.

sic is otm re: martin, and berlatsky is even worse.

Yeah, I'd not looked at the Hooded U before because of a deep aversion to Berlatsky's thought and writings. I can't help feel that he's using things like the Shooter piece primarily to wind Gary Groth up.

I like Berlatsky. He can be painfully contrarian and provocative for its own sake (I think Martin does this sometimes too) but he's good at writing about issue driven things he really cares about. He used to be quite rude but that died down and he's very welcoming, nice and encourages all sorts of views to come in for discussion.

My problem with Hooded U is that he is constantly dismissing superheroes as irrelevant but mostly features writing about them. Rather than writing feminist critiques of X-Men, I think more writing about explicitly feminist comics by writers who could defend themselves would be better (there has been some, such as the Tits & Clits anthology). I kept suggesting Sam Kieth because he is a weird combination of things whose work always has some level of feminist consciousness (My Inner Bimbo was very strange), but he didn't sound interested.

I appreciate Zainab Akhtar, Domingos, Joe McCulloch and Sarah Horrocks because they cover stuff that nobody else ever talks about. I think this is REALLY IMPORTANT in comics. Considering the amount of people writing online about comics, the lack of variety is astonishing and depressing.

Writing outraged feminist thinkpieces about the latest superhero blunder is just pointless after a certain point, they just keep coming (I think some of those offenses are intended to anger bloggers to create more publicity). Bad comics should be marginalized rather than spotlighted.
Shifting the focus to genuinely good comic creators is way more important than trying to reform some hopeless cause. It really infuriates me when people want to correct DC and Marvel to be a certain way when there are already comics that fulfil that criteria. I think comics journalists should try to consciously keep contributing something positive, it's way easier for fans and critics to change the comics industry than something like the film industry.

I find it amazing that Zainab manages to keep talking about interesting comics I've never heard of. That's a valuable contribution to comics.

More about Hooded Utilitarian.

Ng Suat Tong writes some good criticism, unlike most critics he is properly demanding of comics and I appreciate that.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/ng-suat-tong/

Comic artist Mahendra Singh rarely writes there but I enjoy his opinions a lot.
http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/author/mahendra-singh/

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/jun/06/jesse-jacobs-safari-parasites-in-eden/

http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/SF_35_jpg_600x950_q85.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/06/08/magazine/world-cup-curse-of-maracana-1402024157285/world-cup-curse-of-maracana-1402024157285-largeHorizontal375-v3.gif

what do ilc'rs think of some kind of rolling notable comic, cartoon, editorial images thread?

golf, amirite? ilx's comic strip voting thread is now open

just picked up the new Mighty Avengers and the recap page made me do a double-take for its use of TRUTH BOMB

http://therumpus.net/2014/02/the-new-york-comics-picture-story-symposium-keren-katz-on-the-history-of-israeli-comics/

Keren Katz is insanely talented, buy her minis if you get the opportunity

i'm generally skeptical of buzzfeed but this seemed like a good roundup-
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewziegler/indie-comics-that-you-need-to-be-reading

counterpoint: most of those look terrible

Hey, at least they seem to have some good art in there. I just ordered The Last of Us: American Dreams, coincidentally.

yeah! i thought some looked great. i checked out kinski, strange nation, + deadly class. i already like saga

I can always use more library recommendations, will definitely both these on reserve if I can find them

Whoa, I had no idea Faith Erin Hicks is doing The Last of Us, her previous comics (Superhero Girl, Friends with Boys, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong) have all been really good. I'm generally wary of comics based on video games though, have there ever been any good ones?

Pretty Deadly has absolutely gorgeous art by Emma Rios, but the plot is hard to follow. It's more of a mood piece than a plot-driven comic anyway, but I found it to be more admirable than likable. Minimum Wage is definitely worth reading if you like stuff like Hate: it's all about these slacker types inhabiting the border zone of geek and alternative cultures. I haven't read it since the original run in the 90s though, I have no idea how dated it might feel in the 2010s.

Sorry to say I read the first third of The Incal and gave up, then just looked across the rest of the pages. Nothing about it really grabbed me much; although there are some good designs and images, overall it's not really impressive for Moebius standards.
I also have a problem with pages densely packed with lots of busy panels and loads of text boxes/bubbles.

It seems like Refn is making a film of it but I don't know why Jodorowsky would allow that. I hate that I'll probably see the film and like it better (I'm not really a fan of the idea of adaptations).

Often I think being a comic, film or book reviewer sounds like a nightmare, trying to get through something you're not enjoying is gotta be worse than shifts at a lot of boring jobs.

...no.

Different strokes. The idea of having to complete loads of videogames I didn't like to give a proper review is especially miserable. Not wanting to write a shitty review everyone is going to rightfully criticize, wanting to be fair, but putting lots of effort into something that bores you to tears.
I care about comics but I've given up on loads of them in the last few years.

picked up:

- Black Science, not really in love with it yet. i get that it's going for 'pulpy' with the writing, but there's a fine line between willfully pulpy and overwrought+purple.

- new Minimum Wage reboot, funny but I feel like the dude has no idea how to draw non-white-non-bros? all his jewish & POC characters are these like borderline crass visual caricatures, not sure if i want to keep reading.

- sex criminals (nobody here likes this or what? love it)

- the wicked & the divine #1, not sure why everybody's pissing their pants over it--cool art, but i found all the res we're in the media of to be pretty disorienting

Also signed up for a longbox. God forgive me.

I read the first couple volumes of Saga over my weekend vacation and enjoyed them more than I expected

Sex Criminals is kind of entertaining but it's mostly leaning on its premise for novelty factor? I guess if you have an endless love for goofy sex jokes the entertainment keeps rolling.

Anyone reading the Satellite Sam book that Fraction's doing with Chaykin on art, though? The first issue or two were interesting but I didn't follow up.

do you mean a pull box or something, HOOS? a longbox is like... a cardboard box you put comics in

I've pretty much given up on Fraction. Tried the first few Satellite Sam and Sex Criminals books and found both annoying.

do you mean a pull box or something, HOOS? a longbox is like... a cardboard box you put comics in

― mh, Monday, June 23, 2014 7:47 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i mean i'm assuming that my pull box takes physical form as a long box, yes

but its probably just a bag

*sigh*

Sex Criminals is kind of entertaining but it's mostly leaning on its premise for novelty factor?

yeah i mean i'm reading it for the dialogue basically, makes me laugh & i like the characters and their relationship--the 'criminal' side of the story & even the art aren't really that interesting to me

don't feel bad, HOOS, it's probably a little section in a longbox with dividers on either side so your books don't dirty up someone else's

is anyone checking out COWL? curious

sex criminals is okay but the whole SECRET SOCIETY WATCHING YOU schtick felt sub-orphan black and The Fermata is more interesting.

I've been reading whatever shit marvel puts up on the unlimited tablet thing every week, quay d'Orsay (which is spectacular), prophet in trades and going back to the obscure cities again.

going back to the obscure cities

this should be a euphemism

might be!

I'm plowing through silver age Marvel from day one. I'm up to about '64 right now. There's been plenty of dire crap thus far, but Stan's dialogue is starting to pop and Jack's art is starting to get wonderfully weird and abstract, so the good stuff is right around the corner. I have Essential trades for everything through about 1970, so we'll see how ambitious I ultimately am.

Also just learned that Lapham is finally putting out Stray Bullets again, so I ordered the complete Uber Alles trade and will be taking a brief Marvel hiatus for that once it arrives.

I read the first couple volumes of Saga over my weekend vacation and enjoyed them more than I expected

― mh, Monday, June 23, 2014 7:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

3 is great too! 1 my favorite so far tho

yeah, I was wrong, I read all three!

just picked up the start of the new arc over the weekend, its a gutpuncher

I'm plowing through silver age Marvel from day one. I'm up to about '64 right now

Did you find some sort of chronological month by month list for this? I've always wanted to do something similar.

Yeah, in typical fashion for undertakings of this nature, I'm being pretty anal about it. I find The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators to be an utterly invaluable resource for lots of Marvel stuff, including publication dates. There's also a really detailed site with an issue-by-issue timeline that I can dig up if you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole.

In mainstream comics am currently enjoying:

Saga
She-Hulk
Miss Marvel
Letter 44 - this is good, could be a lot better, but has me hooked enough for now
Wonder Woman (the only DC book I bother with now, and I always used to be a DC>Marvel person)
And, bizarrely enough, the two IDW Transformers series, which have become (for the most part) often very funny behind-the-scenes political stories (along with lots of big robots hitting each other)

I wanna rescind my opinion on Black Science btw, now that I've finished the trade I'm suuuuuuuper into it--really, uh, rockets upward after the first issue-and-a-half

Letter 44 - this is good, could be a lot better, but has me hooked enough for now

this looks interesting how deep is it so far

does a hoos read manhattan projects?

not yet, been considering it

Letter 44 is only 7 issues in: The first trade is out or about to be out, collecting the first 6 issues.

Also, I forgot that I'm also really digging Superior Foes of Spider-Man

Feeling like there are a ton of indies right now (Letter 44, God is Dead, Manhattan Projects, Black Science, Mind MGMT, etc etc) that are getting really good writeups, and have great art, but just doing absolutely nothing for me whatsoever.

I'm also reading the first-half of the Sean Howe book (which I skipped first time) and checking lots of 60s-80s Marvel on Marvel Unlimited. It's *really* hard to pick up any Steve Gerber that's not Howard the Duck - any recommendations how to do that?

Otherwise nothing out of the ordinary for me - I've gotten back into Avengers/New Avengers since Infinity ended (thankfully) and they are both SUPER fun right now. That plus something called, er, Albert the Alien on Thrillbent, whcih is really cute.

The Hickman Avengers stuff where they're trying to figure out exactly how far they're willing to go to protect their earth is getting intense

It's *really* hard to pick up any Steve Gerber that's not Howard the Duck - any recommendations how to do that?

Idk how in print the essentials volumes are but you need Essential Marvel Horror (the one that focuses on Man Thing and the one that focuses on Son of Satan) and Essential Defenders vol 2 and 3.

xxpost A lot of Gerber's '70s work (Defenders, Omega the Unknown, OG Guardians of the Galaxy, Man Thing) has been reprinted in recent years. Whether those reprints are currently in print is a whole other question.